Death Becomes Us

Chapter Fourteen (Pt. 1)

I can remember the first time I saw someone riding a bike, the memory somehow surfacing from Donovan's fog. The tiny, almost insignificant recollection becomes much larger in my mind now that I'm with Elizabeth. It means that her presence is working against Donovan's lock. I am starting to remember them.

This particular memory is not from the time when the bicycle was first invented, when I had viewed its creation as an insignificant moment in history. Instead my attentions were randomly caught on the streets of an unassuming town, in the middle of an unassuming day just before World War II boiled over.

The air shimmered as the sun baked the dusty road I stood by, mindlessly waiting for my next appointment to appear. Clunky cars with noisy motors swept down the one way street, windows shut against the dirt blowing up from the wind. Jazz music was playing from a radio outside of an open shop; trumpets and cymbals piercing through the lazy day.

When it happened, I heard their boisterous crowing first, breaking through the haze and drawing my focus in the opposite direction of the vehicles.

Appearing in a cloud of red dust were six boys on bikes, leaning heavily over the wide spread handle bars, and racing each other against the traffic. They swerved between cars and sprang up on sidewalks, a flurry of energy that contrasted greatly with the languid afternoon. I watched how they gripped their bikes, the way their thin legs rose and fell as they pumped their pedals, and I remembered their great, red, smiling faces shining with sweat.

They passed me and I remember thinking how simple it was for them to ride a bike. If they could race by with such ease then it could not be so difficult to master, but now I see I was sorely mistaken.

"Come on, James," Elizabeth calls, smothering a laugh. "You'll get the hang of it. I promise."

She rides circles around me on her blue bicycle as I pick myself up yet again from the ground. I had landed on my right shoulder and I shake off the ugly sensation of pins and needles as I regard my own bicycle with no small amount of hatred. It lies at my feet, the front wheel still spinning and its black seat planted firmly in the dusty earth beside the Potomac's asphalt trail. I am half tempted to leave the wretched contraption on the path and follow Elizabeth on foot.

I had hoped, after so many years of observing countless others ride bikes, I would be a natural, but now here we are. I've had three spills, gotten abrasions on both hands, and now bruised my shoulder, and we have barely passed the Potomac's first bridge. If Lucifer does not get me, this bike surely will.

"My foot slipped this time," I say, forcing a smile.

"Oh yeah, sure, I believe you," she replies mockingly. "I thought you said you knew how to ride a bike?"

"I know how to ride in theory," I clarify. "It doesn't mean I've actually ridden one."

"Well, can you ride one any time soon?" she asks. "Or at least before I turn eighty?"

I wave her off, stooping to pick up the bike and righting it on the path, twisting the front wheel back into position. Throwing a leg over one side, I find the pedal and gingerly sit onto the leather seat worn hard by previous renters. Elizabeth slows to a stop, old brakes creaking as she pulls back on the levers near the handlebars. With an amused smirk she leans on her handlebars and watches me attempt, for the fourth time, to ride a bike.

"Could you not watch me like that?" I say.

"I wish you could see yourself," she replies, grudgingly closing her eyes. "You wouldn't want to look away either. You're all limbs and—"